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Problems with using alone in the sentence

I was reading a paragraph on an IELTS paper and a line I got confused in by their usage of alone. It said "In one well-known test, men and women were able to distinguish by smell alone clothing worn by their marriage partners from similar clothing worn by other people. Most of the subjects would not have given much thought to odour as a cue for identifying family members."

Is the usage of alone here correct and what does the sentence mean? Does it help identify their clothing by smell or do they have familiar smell that can be recognised easily?
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Avatar for sahjahn
sahjahn
10
Yes, it is correct and means that the people needed only smell and no other senses to identify the clothing. It is using alone in the sense of singular.
The last part means that they did not think of smell as being something they used to identify their partners
So they were able to identify the clothing by only the smell, without being able to see or sense the clothing in any other way. Rephrasing the sentence, it might read "Men and women were able to distinguish clothing worn by their marriage partners from similar clothing worn by others by just the smell."

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